HRBT

The HRBT plan calls for a new, four-lane bridge/tunnel from the Peninsula to Norfolk. The existing lanes would be used for westbound traffic. Additionally, the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge Tunnel and the James River Bridge will also receive upgrades. It would cost $4.5 billion and use tolls as high as $6 each way. These tolls would apparently be applied to the HRBT, the MMBT, and the JRB.

While nobody can argue that an expanded HRBT would ease traffic flow, I also do not think that anybody would argue that tolling all three crossings would not hurt our economy. As described, this project would give the Southside a serious disadvantage over the Peninsula. It would also negatively impact what weak regional drive for mass transit that we have. Alternatively, the “Third Crossing” would most certainly benefit our regional economy, even with tolls. Its multi-modal design would take cars and trucks off the road by allowing freight traffic and transit. The HRBT plan is designed simply to make money for those involved. The “Third Crossing” was designed to improve our regional competitiveness in the global economy. Money would still be made in a public-private partnership, but the impacts would be positive for the region.

US 460

Turning US 460 into an interstate-grade highway is a noble goal… if it were 1960. While it would certainly improved travel time to Richmond and aid in evacuations, it would not serve to increase the region’s competitiveness. The 460 project would make the Western Tidewater communities more appealing to industry and business, but at the expense of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Chesapeake. The new highway would only serve to expand the sprawl of Richmond towards Hampton Roads. I think it would be fair to define our region as anything within a 45 minutes drive. The US 460 project would make Isle of Wight County a mere 30 minutes away from Petersburg.

The money would be better invested in High Speed Rail. It has already been estimated that if we had true HSR from both Norfolk and Newport News, that we could operate with profits exceeding $30 million a year. That money could pay for a lot of transportation projects. The economic development that HSR would bring would also benefit the entire region, not just the outlying counties.

I am not against public-private partnerships. On the contrary, I think that they can bring much-needed capital to a tight state budget. We do, however, need to spend it wisely, in a way that will allow us to grow our tax base. This way, in the future, we will not have such a tight budget.

Norfolk Southern Train used in Thursday's introduction trip. Photo (c) The Virginian Pilot

Yesterday, the Pilot reported that Norfolk Southern took local leaders on a nice trip from Norfolk to Petersburg and back on a restored passenger train. First, I am jealous. I wish I could go. Actually, I bet Norfolk Southern could pull in a few extra bucks if they ran that trip annually and sold tickets.

For example, think about how you would go to Harbor Park. Water St., Park Ave., and Union St./E. Main St. are the main entry points. Now think about the surrounding area. Both Tidewater Drive and E. City Hall Ave. both point directly at the Park but the no longer connect, thanks to the Interstate. Also, there is a rarely used exit ramp from I-264 that exits onto Claiborne Ave. that has the potential to assist in getting people to the Park without further clogging E. Brambleton Ave. Unfortunately, Claiborne Ave. has to go through residential-sized roads only to have to merge back into Park Ave. The MMTC plan would fix these issues. Tidewater Drive and E. City Hall Ave. would connect directly to Park Ave. There would also be a new road built to connect Claiborne to additional parking on that side of the railroad tracks.

On the  SPQ side, there are also a number of new connections. The roadways that go through the public housing were designed to not connect. This may be good for keeping poor people from getting out (which doesn’t actually help anybody) but it is bad for a pedestrian-friendly, mixed use development. The SPQ plan would fix this. It would restore a grid system of roads and reconnect the SPQ area to Brambleton Ave. and to Tidewater Drive.

These projects are big news for Norfolk. Both will feed off of each other and off of Downtown. These two projects will nearly double the size of Downtown. Now we just need to get them built. The MMTC has a good chance of getting started if Norfolk gets award the federal grant they applied for.  The SPQ, however, appears to still be in limbo. When the project was released, the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority decided they wanted to slow things down. Despite their successes in Broad Creek, they seem to still think that they can better serve their clients by containing them in poverty rather than allowing them to mingle with the middle class.

Regardless, since most people don’t read the studies and plans that the city releases, I wanted to make it easy. I have created a map below that shows the major points of both the SPQ and the MMTC combined.  Let me know what you think. Click on something and it should tell you what it is.

If you want to read the actual plans from the City, you can view the MMTC plan here and the SPQ plan here.

View

Hampton Roads Third Crossing in a larger map

The biggest question here should not be which road to widen, but how to fund the Third Crossing.  The estimated cost of the Third Crossing is nearly $6 billion (adjusted for inflation since 1997). That is obviously not going to be funded by Hampton Roads alone. $6 billion is approximately the same as the all of the Seven Cities’ budgets combined. This is the part where we need to get creative. The only way to get this built is to explore a combination of funding streams. Here is my plan:

First, we need to identify all stakeholders and get contributions. For example, the military will benefit from a Third Crossing, so they should chip in around half a billion dollars. The ports will benefit enormously, so the VA Port Authority should chip in around a billion dollars. The state should definitely chip in close to a billion dollars. The federal government is going to have to supply most of the money, perhaps 2.5 or three billion. The rest is going to have to be made up for with tolls. Of course, a Public-Private partnership could be reached that would allow the state, federal, and port subsidies to be reduced (but not eliminated). A one- or two-cent region-wide sales tax could also help reduce the subsidy from the state.

I know everyone hates tolls and taxes. I do to. However, nothing is free. Like I said, the cost of this project is the total of the budgets for all of the Seven cities. If we rely solely on the state or federal government, it will never get built. As for the HRBT, why waste $2-3 billion to build something that we may not need if we build the Third Crossing

Multi-Modal Transportation Center Full Build Out Concept and Development Sites along Connecting Routes

Norfolk is moving forward with planning and financing a new multi-modal transportation center Downtown. Excellent idea. The plan is to have it ready to open once Amtrak rolls in in three years. It is very exciting. Combining the news of Virginia Beach’s move toward urbanism and I get the idea that our area is actually maturing as a metropolitan area. The one thing that scared me for a minute, though, was where it said,

“In addition, a new bus transfer facility would be developed, moving about two-thirds of buses from the current location at Cedar Grove north of downtown on Monticello Avenue.”

I was worried that might mean that Norfolk was going to keep 1/3 of the buses at Cedar Grove. Fear not. According to the full report by the City,

At present, 17 routes on the HRT network serve the Cedar Grove site, and be-tween 6,000 – 7,000 passengers board or alight daily at the facility. The general conditions of the Cedar Grove site combined with its lack of amenities, poor pedestrian link-ages and connections, and also its remoteness from downtown activity centers combine to make the restructuring of the primary bus transfer operation in Norfolk a high priority. Its lack of a direct connection to the light rail corridor is also another detriment of the current site. … It is planned that the new bus transfer operation at the Multi-Modal Transportation Center will serve 9 current HRT bus routes operating to the Downtown Norfolk area generally from areas to the south and east. Concurrent to this restructuring of the transit network, 6 other bus routes to the downtown area from the west and north would also be realigned to serve other light rail stations which will help to further deemphasize and limit congestion at the Cedar Grove site and thereby improving passenger service and convenience across the entire bus transit network.

That mean 15 out of 17 buses will no longer serve Cedar Grove. I hope the other two will only serve it by driving by. Thinking about it, this actually shows some intelligence on the part of Norfolk city officials. They publicly recognize that Cedar Grove  is a terrible place for a bus transfer point. Ignoring the fact that the city is solely responsible for Cedar Grove, I have to give someone credit on this one. One problem. In the build-out image above, the nice, new bus transfer location has been built over with a parking garage. Check it out yourself:

Where did our bus transfer point go?

I want to emphasize the fact that the committee in charge of handing our money stated that “public transit is the future of transportation.” This is a huge leap forward for state policy on transportation. I can only hope and pray that they follow through with some HSR money and maybe some more LRT money.

Overall, I am still curious about the ability to pay for it, but I am excited at the same time. I am excited because, as a region, we have picked an option and have made our decision. I encourage everybody to make sure to comment and support Alternative 1 for High Speed Rail in South Hampton Roads.

If you would like to attend, there is a final meeting in Norfolk tonight at 5:30 at the Cruise Terminal. All comments are due by Feb. 11.

Cities Without Suburbs - By: David Rusk

I recently finished reading a book by David Rusk called “Cities without Suburbs.” I highly recommend this book to everyone. The book argues in support of regional cooperation and/or consolidation of suburbs with their historically central cities. Going beyond your typical benefits of regional cooperation, this book explains, with evidence, that there are many benefits for regional consolidation of services. He thoroughly identifies the problems facing inner cities today including, increasing poverty rates, decreasing tax revenues, and the inherent problems with solving complicated social, transportation, housing, economic, and budgetary problems when cooperating with a number of municipalities. Using census data, he explains why cities that have expanded their boundaries to encompass their own suburbs have historically done much better than cities that are unable to expand their boundaries.These locked-in cities lose revenue, resources, and opportunities in the long run to their independent suburbs. This same reason is also why suburbanites fight consolidation/annexation. They believe that their suburbs are doing well and that they don’t want to take on the inner city’s problems. There are a couple of problems with this philosophy, however. First, history and statistics have shown that suburbs that are independent from their central city do not grow as fast as suburbs that are connected to their city. In fact, the average income for the entire region is lower for regions that are segmented versus those that are not. Second, when connected to their suburbs, central cities have fewer problems and the region as a whole has a lower crime rate and a better quality of life.

While I have always felt that a regional Hampton Roads would be a good thing, this book got me thinking that it should go further than that. It is certainly a step in a positive direction to have regional organizations. Certainly don’t get me wrong. Our current institutions such as HRT, SPSA, HRPDC, HRTPO etc all have their problems but when it comes down to it, they make certain things simpler for our area. Imagine if each city had to run its own bus service. You would have to transfer to another bus every time you crossed a city boundary. What if each city had to compete individually for transportation money from the state and federal government? You think we get shorted our share now? Despite current and planned or possible future regional entities, we still need to go further.

Let’s look at one thing that our region does. It may seem minor but think about it. Tourism. Our region has many great tourist attractions. From the Virginia Beach Oceanfront and Ocean Breeze to Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens/Water Country and everything in between such as Nauticus and the Wisconsin, Hampton Roads has a lot to offer. Each city spends millions a year in tourism advertising money to attempt to attract visitors to patronize their respective city. While places like Virginia Beach and Williamsburg spend money to directly advertise their attractions, other places such as Chesapeake advertise to attract visitors to stay in their hotels, hoping to capture tourists’ shopping dollars at Greenbrier, etc. The reason this has to be done is because otherwise, Chesapeake makes no money off of Virginia Beach’s tourists. If our cities were one jurisdiction, however, things would be much different. We could combine our money to advertise for our regional attractions and the whole area would benefit. The area of Chesapeake would benefit just as much from tourists that came to Greenbrier as from those that never shopped west of Lynnhaven.

The same goes for transportation. Think of our major projects. The HRBT is a good example. As it stands, Hampton and Newport News want an expanded HRBT. Norfolk, however, is against it because the outcome on our side of the water would be destroyed properties. If we were one city, though, we would be much more likely to support it. An expanded HRBT would almost certainly be a catalyst for a better business climate on the Peninsula. Norfolk doesn’t really care about that. Hampton voters can’t vote for Norfolk’s City Council. As one city, the Peninsula’s economic climate would be Norfolk’s economic climate meaning that the expanded HRBT would benefit the city. Same goes for the Dominion Blvd. project. Peninsula, Norfolk and VB leaders can see how it is important to Chesapeake and the region overall. Secretly, though, they also know that Chesapeake residents are not their constituency. They can support Chesapeake’s project but at the same time they are obligated to do what is best for their constituency.

We can look at social issues. Public housing for example. First, current housing projects were built in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, and Hampton simply because the cities were there. Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, Suffolk and the counties of Hampton Roads did not have the capacity to support large scale housing projects at the time. Current housing policy no longer supports concentrated ‘projects.’ Studies have shown that everyone does better when the poor are dispersed throughout the middle class housing areas. This dispersion keeps the poor from feeling hopeless about their situation. Their income rates increase as does the pass rate for their school children. College attendance and graduation rates increase. Despite the objections by some middle class areas, the property values do not decrease and crime does not increase. In cities that are serious about this policy, overall crime rates tend to decrease and overall income averages go up. In our area, however, due to our segmented cities and therefore our segmented housing authorities, the residents of the current projects cannot be transferred to other cities using funds from their home city to pay the rent. This condition severely limits the ability of our housing authorities to successfully assist the poor residents of the housing projects. As one city, the authority could move residents freely around the region to make sure that they have the best opportunity to advance their situations.

I think that this can be accomplished with the right amount of public support. This will not be easy, however, and will take careful consideration to make a thorough proposal to the General Assembly (required for consolidation in Virginia). This will require public education and public input to make sure that all issues are addressed. I know that not everyone will support this but that is typical of any major proposal. I also know that if we could consolidate our area so that the central cities encompasses 60-75 % of our regional population that we would be a force to be reckoned with at the state, federal, and economic levels.

My only question is why can Hampton Roads not come up with something this comprehensive. We did work on a plan for the future of transit but it seems to be viewed more as a dream and less of an actual this-is-what-we-need-to-work-for plan. Think about it. You see city after city create plans and actually follow them. Our area can do that too. Virginia Beach has been working on the Southeastern Parkway for 23 years now because it falls into their now-outdated plans to make the Corporate Landing office park successful. Why can’t we work this hard to make transit plans come through? If you ask any city, they will tell you that they want it to work, but nobody seems to be actually pushing for it.

In my opinion, the reason for the lack of drive for this issue is the lack of regional cooperation. Fairfax’s plan will work and has support because it only deals with one locality, Fairfax County. It ties into existing routes that go into other municipalities, but the plan itself, only expands service inside county lines. Here, however, our plan encompasses Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Newport News, Hampton, Williamsburg, James City County, and York County. In fact part of our Transit Vision Plan extends service toward Moyock, NC. How in the world do our leaders think that they can make something this expansive work if they can’t make simpler regional systems work. It is hard enough to get two cities to work on a bus route together let alone a system including both light rail and commuter rail. We need a functional regional government. If our localities could combine services and resources, we could actually overcome the problems that we face now. Look around. we are facing budget cuts all the time and money can no longer be guaranteed by the state. We have to help ourselves. Nobody else is coming to our rescue.